What is the difference between references and normal variable handles in C++?

Question

If C++, if I write:

int i = 0;
int& r = i;

then are i and r exactly equivalent?

Answer 1

Yep - a reference should be thought of as an alias for a variable, which is why you can't reassign them like you can reassign pointers (and also means that, even in the case of a non-optimizing compiler, you won't take up any additional storage space).

When used outside of function arguments, references are mostly useful to serve as shorthands for very->deeply->nested.structures->and.fields :)